Scientist Yangyang Cheng Implores Her Peers To Risk Their Careers For Scientific Freedom And Human Rights

By Steve Bynum, Jerome McDonnell
Superconducting Super Collider project manager Ricky Richards poses with a machine in the tunnel of the high-tech project near Waxahachie, Texas, on Sept 1,1993.
Superconducting Super Collider project manager Ricky Richards poses with a machine in the tunnel of the high-tech project near Waxahachie, Texas, on Sept 1,1993. AP Photo/Ron Heflin
Superconducting Super Collider project manager Ricky Richards poses with a machine in the tunnel of the high-tech project near Waxahachie, Texas, on Sept 1,1993.
Superconducting Super Collider project manager Ricky Richards poses with a machine in the tunnel of the high-tech project near Waxahachie, Texas, on Sept 1,1993. AP Photo/Ron Heflin

Scientist Yangyang Cheng Implores Her Peers To Risk Their Careers For Scientific Freedom And Human Rights

By Steve Bynum, Jerome McDonnell
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The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists announced last week the winner of its Leonard M. Rieser Award for 2017. The award honors “outstanding emerging science and security experts who are passionate about connecting scientific research to policy outcomes.”

Yangyang Cheng is a postdoctoral research associate at the Cornell Laboratory for Accelerator-Based Sciences and Education (CLASSE). Her award-winning essay is titled “Let science be science again.” Cheng’s recent article in Foreign Policy magazine explores the challenges to scientific freedom surrounding a possible subatomic supercollider project in China.

Cheng will tell us why she writes and views “science as a path out of adversity” and why she wants more scientists to put their careers on the line for the sake of human rights and social justice.